Article Posted on : - Dec 08, 2010

Artist concept of a solar sail in space. A NASA photo

WASHINGTON (BNS): A NASA-designed nanosatellite, about the size of a loaf of bread, has successfully ejected from its mothership – a free-flying microsatellite – and is getting ready to be deployed in the low-Earth orbit.

The NanoSail-D satellite ejected in space from the Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology Satellite (FASTSAT) at 0631 GMT on Monday, “demonstrating the capability to deploy a small cubesat payload from an autonomous microsatellite in space,” NASA said.

The tiny satellite, similar to a solar sail, was launched along with the FASTSAT on November 19, 2010 from Alaska.

“The successful ejection of NanoSail-D demonstrates the operational capability of FASTSAT as a cost-effective independent means of placing cubesat payloads into orbit safely,” Mark Boudreaux, FASTSAT project manager at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alaska, said.

The NanoSail-D will now prepare to be deployed in the low-Earth orbit in the next three days.

While being deployed in the Earth orbit, the satellite will use its large sail made of thin polymer material, much thinner than a single human hair, to significantly reduce the time to de-orbit its mother satellite without using propellants as done by most traditional satellites.

After ejection, a timer within NanoSail-D will begin a three day countdown as the satellite orbits the Earth. Once the timer reaches zero, four booms will quickly deploy and the NanoSail-D sail will start to unfold to a 100 square foot polymer sail. Within five seconds the sail fully unfurls.

If the deployment is successful, NanoSail-D will stay in low-Earth orbit between 70 and 120 days, depending on atmospheric conditions, NASA said.

NASA aims to use similar technology on large spacecrafts to de-orbit space debris created by decommissioned satellites without using valuable mission propellants if the NanoSail D technology demonstration programme successfully achieves its mission objectives.